CHAPTER NINE
NO WONDER Melissa had been so bitchy about the deprivations that her brother had been made to suffer, thought Jane several hours later as she left her room to wander through the magnificent two-storeyed holiday house perched on the headland above Piha. Compared to Great-Aunt Gertrude’s, this place was a palace!
The long modern Mediterranean-style house was bounded at the rear by a dense stand of virgin native bush and the north-facing aspect captured the sun all day. The outflung arms of the building curved in a broad U-shape towards the cliff, as if reaching out to embrace the spectacular view, and from her upstairs bedroom, which opened out, like all the other bedrooms, onto its own private balcony, Jane could see the whole of Piha—even a wedge of the rusty iron roof that she had been persuaded to temporarily abandon.
Once he had had her agreement, the shift in premises had been accomplished with Ryan’s usual ruthless efficiency, leaving little time for second thoughts. Jane had no reason to feel piqued that he had merely given her a brief tour of his house before disappearing with a vague murmur about letting her settle in. Melissa, too, had floated off, gleefully smug that her obnoxious behaviour had achieved one of her primary aims.
Jane had her doubts. She got the feeling that it was Ryan who had been the main orchestrater of events. Melissa had merely been the deus ex machina by which he had distracted and manoeuvred Jane into accepting a deal that she would otherwise have flatly refused to even consider. Ryan could hardly have continued to escalate his campaign of seduction in the poky little cottage, with his sister breathing down their necks, alert to every creak of the floorboards, every stray touch and heated look. But here, in comfort and luxury, with privacy locks on all the bedroom doors and little distraction from her rapidly healing burn, Jane was all too vulnerable to his dangerously seductive persistence.
Jane’s mouth dried at the memory of Ryan’s lovemaking and, since she had drifted in the general direction of the kitchen, she decided on a cold drink to cure her hot flush.
She hesitated at the door when she saw a small, spare, middle-aged woman with a short helmet of silver hair bustling back and forth between the sink and central work-island, obviously preparing vegetables for dinner. This must be the housekeeper who was employed on a part-time basis whenever the family was in residence, Jane guessed. The one that Ryan had mentioned was a superb cook.
She cleared her throat and the woman looked up from her chopping board, surprise springing into her warm hazel eyes at the sight of Jane in her plain skirt and white cotton T-shirt, her feet in classy black flats and her hair rioting loose around her bare face.
‘Hello, I’m Jane Sherwood...’ She faltered, not quite sure how to politely describe her turbulent relationship with Ryan.
‘Yes, I know.’ The woman’s face lit up in a generous smile that made Jane feel like an old and valued friend. ‘What an awful time you’ve been having, my dear. I’m Peggy Mason. I won’t offer to shake hands because I know you can’t. Come on in and sit down. You look hot... would you like an iced tea?’ She put down her knife, drying her hands on her apron. ‘I find it just the thing in this heat. Sit here and I’ll get you one.’
She steered Jane onto a stool at the breakfast bar which divided the kitchen from an open living area, clicking her tongue sympathetically as she looked at the damaged hands. ‘You poor thing—no wonder Ryan insisted you needed looking after. I bet it’s terribly frustrating... like being a baby all over again. Now, would you like something to eat with your glass of tea? I know you had lunch before you came, but dinner won’t be served until quite late...the family likes to eat out on the terrace and watch the sunset—’
‘Uh, no thank you, Mrs Mason,’ said Jane, disconcerted by her familiarity yet irresistibly drawn by the woman’s maternal warmth.
‘Call me Peggy.’ She set down the iced tea and returned to her chopping, making little piles of celery and onion as she continued with a chiding frown, ‘I hope you’re not dieting. It’s not a good thing to do when your body’s been under a lot of pain or stress.’
‘I have lost a bit too much weight recently,’ Jane was amazed to hear herself confess. ‘But not on purpose... and I think I’m starting to put it back on,’ she added hurriedly as Peggy frowned and she sensed an impending scold.
But the housekeeper’s vehement disapproval was directed elsewhere. ‘Ryan has a lot to answer for! Melissa told me how you burnt your hand. I hope he apologised for causing you to hurt yourself!’
Jane’s smile was rueful. ‘Well, it was mostly my own stupidity...’ Both times, she added mentally, flattening out the strapped fingers of her left hand and experiencing the faint twinge that reminded her that if she had obeyed her original orders the healing would have been complete by now.
Grey eyebrows rose sharply over hazel eyes. ‘You’re far too forgiving, my dear. A hefty dose of guilt is just what that boy needs to curb his tendency to play God!’
‘Well, he appears to be trying to make up for it...’ Jane said weakly, suddenly realising that Peggy wasn’t just referring to her current physical injuries. By her easy manner she was obviously used to being treated as part of the family by the Blairs and must be aware of Ryan’s vendetta, if not the reason for it. Her affection for him was plainly strong, but her natural sympathies seemed to lie with the underdog.
‘Oh? In what way?’
Jane pinkened at the innocent question. ‘Well, he’s cooked me some marvellous meals,’ she said hastily, burying her nose in her tea.
‘Mmm...’ Peggy gave her an assessing look. ‘He’s pretty handy in the kitchen, I’ll give him that.’
And the bedroom! Jane’s flush deepened as the thought popped into her head.
‘I wish I was—a good cook, I mean,’ she stammered. ‘My technique is still very much trial and error. Unfortunately I never learned the basics when I was young...’
‘Didn’t your mother ever let you help her around the kitchen when you were little?’
‘We always had a cook and I wasn’t supposed to get in the way. My mother left home when I was six,’ Jane added impulsively.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Peggy, with a quiet compassion that tapped a deep-seated need in Jane’s subconscious.
‘Actually, I don’t remember that much about her, except that she was dark and pretty and liked to laugh and went out a lot,’ she admitted, her eyes darkening with memory. ‘After she left, my father burnt all her photos and only mentioned her when he was in a rage, so I’m not sure if what I remember is real or a childish fantasy I’ve built up in my head.’
‘Do you mean you never saw her again after your parents separated?’
Jane looked down at the glass she was slowly turning around in her clumsy grip, missing the warning glance that the hazel eyes directed over her head.
‘No...she was just there one day and gone the next. It wasn’t until a week later that my father told me she’d run off to Canada with her lover. He said she’d told him she didn’t want to be saddled with the responsibility of a whining little brat like me.’
Peggy almost dropped her knife, clearly appalled. ‘He said that to a six-year-old child!’
Jane had never found it easy to confide in people, instilled with her father’s belief that if you were strong you didn’t bother other people with your problems, especially if they were emotional ones. But Peggy’s empathy made it seem natural to open up.
‘He used to say that the reason she never bothered to send me birthday cards was because she obviously preferred to forget I’d ever been born. He always managed to make me feel a failure for not being able to make her love me enough to stay...’
‘That was very, very wrong of him,’ Peggy said fiercely. ‘It’s never a child’s fault when a marriage fails.’
‘He wasn’t just wrong—he was lying,’ Jane blurted out. ‘He lied about their being divorced and he lied about her not caring what happened to me. You see, after my father died I was going through his safety deposit box and I found some old letters and documents about their separation agreement and a wrangle over child access.
‘My mother had gone to Canada with another man but she’d been killed in a car accident in Montreal a couple of months after she got there. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to take me away with her, but it wasn’t true that she wanted to pretend I never existed. There was correspondence from her lawyer, demanding assurances that I would be given any letters that she sent, and she’d asked my father to get me a passport so I could visit her. But then she was killed.
‘She died—and for years, until I stopped letting him know how much I cared, my father told me she was having too much fun with her new life to send me a birthday card!’
There was a faint sound behind her and Jane jerked around, almost spilling the rest of her tea. Ryan was standing in the doorway, and from the grim look on his face he had been there for quite some time.
‘No wonder you believed me so easily when I told you about what your father had done to mine,’ he rasped, entering the sunlit room, his white trousers and yellow shirt adding an extra dimension to its brightness. ‘You knew it was just the kind of callous, conscienceless thing a bastard like him would do!’
‘Ryan!’ Peggy Mason’s hazel eyes were full of reproach.
‘Sorry, but it’s the truth and we all know it.’ Ryan sighed as he went over and kissed the finely lined cheek. ‘Hello, Mum, what are you doing here...besides the obvious?’ he said, looking wryly at Jane.
‘You’re Ryan’s mother?’ Jane experienced a sinking feeling in her stomach as she looked from the tiny woman with whom she had felt such an instant kinship to the giant towering beside her, searching in vain for a resemblance. Now she knew why the housekeeper had seemed so well informed!
‘I thought you realised who I was when I introduced myself,’ said Peggy in surprise. ‘I’m sorry—I just assumed you’d know my second husband’s surname. Who did you think I was?’
‘Probably another of my girlfriends,’ said Ryan cruelly. ‘When Melissa turned up Jane thought she was some infatuated nymphet I was keeping on a string.’
‘No, I didn’t!’ she snapped. She smiled apologetically at his mother, deciding that in the long run her ignorance had probably done her a favour, easing what could otherwise have been a hideously awkward meeting. ‘I’m afraid I just assumed you were the housekeeper...’
Peggy’s surprise turned to amused understanding. ‘I see. And now you’re embarrassed by your frankness. Don’t be—I appreciated the insight and I’m sure you feel better for talking about it.’
‘You still haven’t told me why you’re here, Mum,’ interrupted Ryan. ‘I thought you said Steve had some wedding parties booked for this week and would be too busy for you to come down. And why are you cooking instead of Teresa?’
‘The school called for her to pick up her son—he apparently has chicken pox—so I told her that of course we could manage without a housekeeper for the next few days. And it’s because Steve is going to be so busy that I thought I might as well come down and enjoy some of this wonderful beach weather.’
Ryan picked up a piece of celery and crunched it between strong white teeth as he studied her innocent expression. ‘So you’re saying that Melissa didn’t phone you to tell you what we were doing? This surprise visit has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Jane and I are here—’
‘Well, that is a bit of a bonus, darling.’ His mother patted his hard cheek fondly. ‘Since it’s too rare these days that I get to enjoy the company of both my children on holiday at the same time. Ryan hardly ever spends time at Piha any more,’ she said to Jane, who was beginning to realise that his mother was more than a match for Ryan’s shrewdness. ‘The last time I tried to get him to stay more than a weekend he was chafing at the bit by the second day.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Jane murmured wryly.
‘Do you?’ She tilted her head in bird-like enquiry. ‘Has he been an awful nuisance?’
‘No, I haven’t! I’ve been trying to get Jane to rest. How long are you going to stay?’ he asked bluntly.
‘Well, I don’t know...a few days at least—it depends on how I’m feeling. You know I don’t usually have a timetable about these things.’ The hazel eyes smiled at her son’s open frustration.
‘Steve’ll miss you—’
‘We don’t live totally in each other’s pockets, Ryan. It’s not as if he’s very far away.’
He muttered something under his breath.
‘What did you say, darling?’
‘Nothing,’ he gritted.
Jane stood up, feeling awful. ‘Oh, please! I think I should leave. I know you can’t possibly want me in your home,’ she said to the older woman. ‘It’s not as if I don’t have somewhere to go—’
‘No, dammit!’
‘Nonsense, of course you mustn’t leave.’ Peggy’s mellow voice of reason overrode Ryan’s raw explosion. ‘I’ve never believed in children being responsible for the sins of their fathers.’ This was accompanied by a stern look that, to Jane’s fascination, made Ryan thrust his bunched hands in his trouser pockets, his face darkening except for a thin white line around his compressed mouth.
‘From the sound of it you were as much a victim of your father as I was, so let there be no awkwardness about the past. As for what happened with Ava, well...that’s all water under the bridge now. Isn’t that right, Ryan?’
He jerked his head, his eyes smouldering on Jane’s embarrassed face. ‘I’ve already told her that, but she won’t believe me.’
His mother’s mouth pursed. ‘You do surprise me, Ryan, and after all you’ve done for her, too!’
He set his teeth at her sarcasm. ‘I said I’d look after her and I will.’
‘How magnanimous of you. I hope you don’t expect her to feel grateful.’
Ryan wrenched a hand out of his pocket and ran it through his hair. ‘For God’s sake, Mum, what are you trying to do to me?’
His mother smiled serenely. ‘Just checking, darling.’
Thinking that mother and son might like to have a discussion in private, Jane asked if she could put some personal laundry into the washing machine. Peggy explained where it was, saying that if she needed help in doing anything she only had to ask for it.
She did her small load of washing and spent what remained of the afternoon and on into the evening leafing through the kind of fashion magazines she could no longer afford to buy, talking with Peggy in the kitchen and watching Melissa try to come to terms with her mother’s kindness towards the enemy.
Whenever Ryan appeared his mother gave him a task to perform that involved them all, and at dinner he found himself at the opposite end of the table to Jane. Melissa cheered up at this evidence that her mother’s kindness might be of the killing kind, and after dinner decided it was safe to drive down the road to party with a group of friends.
After she and Ryan had done the dishes, Peggy suggested a film that was showing on television—another luxury that Jane could no longer take for granted—and the three of them settled down to watch, Ryan exiled to a chair while the two women shared the couch. The film was a thriller with a strong thread of romance, and whenever there was a love scene Jane had to force herself to keep her eyes on the screen, conscious of the brooding looks Ryan was sending her way. As soon as the credits rolled he sprang to his feet and declared that Jane was looking tired and that he would see her to her room.
He had tugged her out of her comfortable seat and hustled her as far as the door when the arrival of an international call thwarted his intentions, and he scowled impotently as Peggy blandly offered to escort their guest upstairs while he took the call—since, if Jane was so tired, she wouldn’t want to wait around heaven knew how long for Ryan to finish his business...
‘I’m sorry for putting you to all this extra work while your housekeeper’s away,’ said Jane awkwardly, after her hostess had tactfully helped her to change into the baggy T-shirt she had taken to sleeping in. The older woman then produced some large rubber kitchen gloves so that Jane could wash her own face, an idea which, to her chagrin, had never occurred to her—not that Great-Aunt Gertrude appeared to have possessed any gloves—or to Ryan, who was supposed to be so clever! But, of course, it had been in his interests to encourage her continuing dependence on him!
‘I’m enjoying it,’ admitted Peggy, watching Jane sit down at the dressing table and begin gingerly brushing her hair. ‘It’s about time Ryan came to his senses. I warned him that he would regret it if he let his desire for revenge get out of hand, but of course he claimed that that would never happen. Now I think he’s finally realised that two wrongs don’t make a right!’
‘That’s not what Melissa thinks—’ Jane winced as the bristles caught on a knot and the handle of the brush yanked free of the gentle grip of her left hand.
‘Here, let me do that,’ said Peggy, picking up the brush and taking over where Jane had left off. ‘Melissa still sees everything in black and white. She doesn’t see that there might be wider issues at stake or extenuating circumstances. To her, there are no shades of grey.’
‘And I’m a very grey area,’ said Jane wryly.
‘Oh, a veritable grey hole.’ Peggy’s eyes twinkled in the mirror.
Jane swallowed. She had to say it. ‘I don’t know why you’re being so nice to me. I mean, after what I did to Ryan...those awful lies I told to break up the wedding... the scandal...you must have hated me...’
Peggy put down the brush and sighed. ‘Hate is such a self-destructive emotion. I was shocked, certainly, but to tell you the truth when Ava returned Ryan’s ring I wondered if it wasn’t all for the best.’
‘But Melissa told me you were heartbroken that Ryan didn’t marry Ava.’
The older woman sat on the bed. ‘Melissa exaggerates. What I wanted—what I still want—is for Ryan to be happy. I don’t know how much he’s told you about himself, but revenge was the driving obsession of his life for over a decade. The need to make your father pay for what he did shaped his ambitions and absorbed all of his emotional energy.
‘When he found out that your father was dying and forced himself to relinquish his obsession I was very proud of him—no revenge is more honourable than the one not taken. But it meant that suddenly there was a huge emotional void in his life, and I think he instinctively sought to fill it with the utter antithesis of the ugliness, the greed and corruption that had obsessed him for so long...someone soft and quiet and gentle whom he could cherish and protect and never have any desire to hurt.
‘He has very highly developed protective instincts where women are concerned—a legacy of being suddenly made the man of the family so young, I suppose—but he also has a deep respect for female strength, which I flatter myself is because of me. I may be small and delicate-looking but I’m tough—I had cervical cancer when Melissa was a baby, but it was caught early and I’m a fighter; I faced up to it and beat it. I think when Ryan met Ava he saw a woman like me—someone delicate, gentle, and with a core of steel that he could rely on in adversity. But the way that Ava acted at the wedding, and afterwards, well... I suspect that Ryan might have mistaken quietness for depth, and that she wouldn’t have had the resilience to cope with Ryan when he was in a towering temper, which is not infrequently, or to stand up to him when his arrogance needed taking down a peg or two. Would that be an accurate assessment of her, do you think?’
Treasuring this glimpse into the complexity and contradictions of the man she loved and yet found so difficult to understand, Jane met the perceptive hazel gaze in the mirror.
‘If you’re asking did I think they were unsuited,’ she said carefully, ‘then, yes, I thought they were deeply unsuited.’ And her tone suggested that was as much as she was prepared to say.
Peggy nodded. ‘Tell me, just out of interest, what would you have done, Jane, in those circumstances? If some other woman had tried to stop you from marrying Ryan at the brink of the altar...?’
Jane swung around, blood in her eye, and Peggy rose with a quietly satisfied smile.
‘Quite. Pistols at dawn rather than lady-like hysterics. Well, goodnight, my dear. Sleep well. And I suggest you lock your door if you consider you’ve already said a sufficiently polite goodnight to my son!’
Jane blushed...but did as Peggy suggested. She was deeply grateful for this unexpected gift of Peggy’s moral support—whatever her motives might be—for without it she knew she could easily become a victim of her own desires. Drained by the upheavals of the day, she fell into bed and slept like a log, blissfully unaware of Ryan’s soft tapping on the door an hour later.
The next morning followed the pattern set the previous afternoon, with Ryan’s suggestion of a drive over to Karekare and a walk amongst the towering black sand-dunes overridden because Peggy wanted to look at the fashion sketches that Jane had mentioned at dinner.
She was encouragingly enthusiastic, and when she learned that Jane had been a keen sewer at school and was eager to take it up again she offered to give her a refresher course when her hands had healed enough to handle scissors and pins. Whisked up to the sewing room off Peggy’s bedroom, Jane admired the state-of-the-art electronic overlocker and sewing machine, and shyly confided her dream of one day making a living out of sewing her own designs for sale at the markets, or in one of Auckland’s many individualist boutiques.
Melissa mooched in on them and found herself reluctantly drawn into a discussion about the designers she liked. Shut out by a conspiracy of female opinion, Ryan gave up and retreated to the downstairs library that he used as an office.
At lunch he was surly and made no enquiry as to what Jane intended to do afterwards, an attitude that was explained by the arrival of Carl Trevor carrying a bulging briefcase. The women went down to the beach, and when they came back to find Carl’s meeting with Ryan dragging on into the evening Peggy invited him to stay the night in comfortable tones of long familiarity. He accepted with an alacrity that was regarded sourly by his chief, especially when he produced an overnight bag from the boot of his BMW.
Recalling their two previous encounters, Jane was highly embarrassed to be seated next to Carl at dinner, but he smoothly exerted himself to put her at ease and she was soon laughing at his sardonic wit, relaxed enough to tease him about his jaded view of the world and joke about her newly acquired homesteading skills.
Peggy’s maternal authority held sway, and Ryan and Melissa were briskly dispatched to do the dishes while Carl stretched and complained about the kinks in his back from an overly enthusiastic session at the gym that morning.
‘Why don’t you hop in the spa pool?’ said Peggy, indicating the tiled round pool sunk into the lower level of the terrace on which they sat. ‘A hot soak is probably what you need to loosen you up.’
‘Good idea—Jane?’
She was frankly envious. ‘Oh, I couldn’t—my hands... Besides, I haven’t got a bathing suit,’ she said wistfully.
‘I have plenty of spares for guests...there’s bound to be one your size. And you can fold your arms on the edge to keep your hands out of the water. Carl will be there to catch you if you slip. Go on, Jane,’ urged Peggy. ‘It’s a wonderfully relaxing way to watch the sun go down.’
And so it was—until Ryan reappeared to find his personal adviser advising a giggling Jane on how to keep her straw in her glass of wine as she was buffeted by the bubbling water jets.
‘Come to join us, Ryan?’ grinned Carl, floating on his back in the water, his lithe physique outlined by the underwater lights.
Ryan’s eyes glinted over Jane’s body, encased in what she had thought was a very modestly cut black swimsuit. Her hair was twisted into a knot on the top of her head but steamy tendrils were escaping to corkscrew around her glistening face. She was flushed from the heat, her dark lashes spiky with moisture and her perpetually serious expression softened by the damp feathering of her thick eyebrows and the laughter lingering around her mouth.
Standing at the edge of the pool, the tip of his shoes almost touching the towel on which her hands rested, Ryan seemed impossibly tall, and as Jane tilted her head back to look up into his face she inadvertently gave him a swooping view straight down into the scooped neck of her swimsuit, where her creamy breasts, buoyed by the water, jostled for room against the tautly straining fabric.
‘I want to talk to you.’
He had the gift of making a simple statement sound ominously like a threat, but Jane felt safe with Carl at her back. He, at least, didn’t tangle her up in emotional knots and make her think sinful thoughts.
‘So...talk,’ she said with an airy shrug of her pale, gleaming shoulders that made her breasts bob gently on the surface of the water as Carl swam up beside her to take a sip from his glass of wine.
A muscle jumped in Ryan’s jaw. ‘Not here. Inside. Now.’
‘But I’m not ready to come out,’ she pouted, encouraged by his clipped restraint. He obviously wasn’t going to risk a scene in front of his PA. ‘Carl and I are working out our kinks, aren’t we, Carl? Your mother recommended it. You should try it, Ryan, you strike me as a man with an awful lot of kinks—’
‘Uh-oh...’
She barely had a chance to register Carl’s breathy sing-song of amused warning as Ryan bent down, grasped her under the armpits and hauled her startled body out of the water with barely a grunt of effort.
‘Is this kinky enough for you?’
Suspended from his grip, Jane flapped like a landed fish. ‘Ryan!’
Ignoring the water sheeting off her body and Carl’s laughingly ineffective remonstrances, Ryan carried her in through the open French doors and across the wide hall.
‘Ryan, I’m dripping all over the carpet!’ she protested in vain as they reached the library and she was set down with a jolt.
‘Don’t think you’re going to use Carl to make me jealous!’ Ryan growled, his hands remaining where they were, firmly compressing the sides of her breasts, his dark blue trousers and shirt showing the wet imprint of her body.
His anger was like the flick of a velvet whip. ‘For goodness’ sake!’
‘I hired him, I can fire him,’ he snarled. ‘Bear it in mind that the next time you feel like flirting with him you could be costing him his career!’
‘You wouldn’t fire an employee for flirting with me, especially not Carl!’ Jane scoffed, with an absolute conviction that sparked a small flame of appreciation in his angry eyes.
He dropped his hands but remained standing between Jane and the door. ‘No, I wouldn’t—because I’m not the cruel bastard you like to pretend to yourself that I am. And I didn’t say he was flirting with you; I said you were flirting with him.’
‘I was just being friendly—’
‘Semi-nude over a couple of glasses of wine? A man could get the wrong idea about a woman that way.’
She wanted to dispute the semi-nudity, but suddenly realised that it would be a mistake to attract his attention to her treacherous body.
‘Are you accusing me of being drunk?’ she demanded belligerently. He knew full well that she had been in no danger of Carl misinterpreting her friendliness, but he was still furious. There was only one explanation for his unreasonable attitude: he was jealous!
Jane’s burst of triumph was swiftly followed by a deep resentment. He had even less right than reason to feel jealous!
Ryan had planted his hands on his hips, his legs astride. ‘No, just stupid—if you think I’m going to let you get away with it! This is between you and me, Jane. I won’t let you hide behind another man, no matter how innocent the situation. If you want to flirt, why don’t you flirt with the man you really want to hop in the sack with?’
Her resentment was goaded into temper. ‘Why, you arrogant—’
‘That’s right, sweetheart, get mad,’ he interrupted, running his gaze insolently down her body, allowing it to linger on her hard nipples, clearly visible against the thin nylon. ‘I like it when you get hot and bothered over me.’ She trembled and a wicked smile softened his angry expression. ‘Hard to fight the memories, isn’t it, Jane?’
Something inside her snapped. ‘You should know!’ she flung at him. ‘You’re the one who can’t let go of the past!’
His dark head went up, as if catching a scent on the wind. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Ava!’
The name shimmered accusingly on the air between them.
‘What about Ava?’ he said, with a careful casualness that didn’t fool her for a moment.
‘Well, she’s still your ideal woman, isn’t she?’ sneered Jane, wrapping her arms around her rapidly cooling body, her voice dripping with sarcasm as she whipped herself up into a jealous rage. It was as if Ryan’s irrational burst of jealousy had given permission for hers to exist, and finally she was free to allow the old, corrosive envy that she had tried so hard to hide from her best friend to bubble to the surface.
‘She’s the oh-so-fragile flower of feminine perfection that all others are measured by, the woman you loved and lost, your soul mate, the one whom you knew instantly on meeting was the woman for you—only, hey, guess what? It turns out that she isn’t!’ she said with sweet vitriol. ‘She ends up marrying someone else so I guess you must have been mistaken. But you can’t accept that. You can’t let the memory rest in peace—you’re still so hung up about her you’re always asking me questions about what she did and why—’
‘Hardly always. That must be your guilty conscience working overtime, Jane,’ he ground out. ‘It’s not her actions—the what and why of what she did that I’m hung up on—it’s making sense out of your involvement.’
But Jane was beyond making sense. Having set her jealousy free, she could no longer control the words spilling off her bitter tongue. ‘Did talking to her again bring all your old feelings flooding back? Are you wondering whether you might get a second chance at your first love? If you’re hoping that she isn’t happy, forget it! She and Conrad have a good marriage.’
He uttered a black curse. ‘I’m not the type to waste my life pining for a lost cause, and that’s what Ava became the moment she got married—only three months after she left me!’
‘Oh? Then why were you so disappointed that I hadn’t told her we’d slept together? Did you hope I might tell her what a fantastic lover you were so that she’d finally realise what she’d been missing? Maybe, in the twisted logic of your revenge having sex with me is the next best thing to bedding my unattainable best friend,’ she spat unforgivably, and when he lunged towards her in raw outrage ducked under his arm and ran—out into the hall and up the stairs, fleet of foot, unencumbered by clothing, splattering drops of water against the walls as she dashed around the landings, conscious of his pounding pursuit gaining on her at every stride.
She’d had enough of a head start to get to her room just in front of him, tears blurring her eyes as her fingers fumbled to shoot the lock a split second before the full force of his pursuing weight hit the door. She leaned back against it, gasping for breath, feeling the vibration of his pounding fists down the length of her spine.
‘Go away!’ she shouted desperately.
‘Jane—open this door!’ He punctuated his angry demand with a hefty kick.
Why? So he could punish her with his contempt for her ridiculous accusations? Or poke and probe with that horribly relentless, incisive mind into the painful reasons for her ignominious loss of control? She’d thought love was supposed to be an enriching, spiritually uplifting experience, not this cheap fairground ride of thrilling euphoria followed by sickening plunges into terrifying despair.
‘No—go away!’ she gulped, dragging an arm across her eyes. Surely he wouldn’t dare break it down? But at least, if he did, she knew the noise would bring Peggy swiftly to the rescue.
His voice lowered and she felt a little bump against the back of her skull that suggested he was resting his forehead against the polished wood. ‘Jane? What’s the matter? Are you crying, sweetheart?’ She could hear him reining in his angry impatience. ‘Look, let me in. I don’t want to hurt you—I just want to talk...’
She gulped back her tears. Sweetheart! How could he call her that? Her heart was as shrivelled as an old boot and it was his fault!
‘Well, I don’t! Go away! Or—or I’ll scream over my balcony for your mother!’
Silence on the other side of the door. Jane smiled a watery, humourless smile. She pressed her ear to the wood and still had it there when she heard a scraping sound coming from the open glass door to her balcony and rushed across just in time to see Ryan launch himself in a flying leap from the narrow rail of the next balcony, at least two metres away. In the darkness he seemed to hover like a sinister avenging angel before swooping earthwards.
Jane screamed as his landing foot hit her rail and slipped off again, but the forward momentum of his upper body carried him over the barrier to crash on his haunches in front of her.
‘Are you crazy? You could have been killed!’ she shrieked angrily as he bounced to his feet, her hands moving helplessly over his arms and heaving chest as if to reassure herself that he was real.
‘Nah...a broken leg or two at the most,’ he said, with infuriating macho insouciance, capturing her wrists and pulling them around his thick waist.
Her heart was still pounding like a freight train. So was his, she realised as her breasts were crushed against the hard wall of his chest. ‘You could have been killed,’ she repeated shrilly, almost paralysed by the thought of losing him.
‘Would you have cared if I’d crashed to my doom?’ he murmured, his hands sliding up her long, trembling back. ‘Maybe you might have thought I deserved it...’
She shuddered, burying her head in the damp front of his shirt, her voice muffled with horror. ‘What a terrible thing to say.’
‘I know... we’ve both said some pretty horrible things to each other in this love/hate relationship of ours, haven’t we? That’s why I think you’re right—we shouldn’t talk, talk only gets us into trouble—and, besides, actions speak louder than words...’
And, so saying, he eased back so that he could slant his hands over her shoulders and hook his fingers into the straps of her wet swimsuit, tugging them gently down her arms to bare her breasts to the soft night air, the whiteness of her body accentuated by the contrasting band of black fabric.
The only protest she could summon was a sigh of longing as he bent to moisten the tight twin peaks.
‘Shh...’ He smothered her choked murmur with his mouth and picked her up, carrying her across to the soft bed and collapsing down on it backwards so that she sprawled on top of him. He reached out and turned on the bedside lamp without breaking off the kiss, and as the familiar, addictive taste of him began to saturate her senses Jane gave herself up to a primitive world of all-consuming passion, devoted to the physical expression of the love that she was too afraid to put into words.
She helped clumsily as Ryan wrestled his shirt and her swimsuit off, throwing them to the floor and tugging her thighs astride him so that he could cup her naked bottom and move her against his undulating hips in a way that made her squirm with pleasure and plead for more. He was about to give it to her when a sharp rap at the door froze them in the midst of their glorious, erotic abandon.
‘Jane—are you all right in there? I thought I heard a scream?’
Jane reared up on her elbows, looking down in shocked embarrassment at the face of the man beneath her. Ryan’s hard features were blurred by reckless passion, his mouth bitten red by her feverish kisses, his eyes glittering chips of blue diamond fire.
‘Yes.’ She tried again, her panicky voice louder as she responded to Peggy’s anxious call. ‘Yes...but it was nothing—I’m fine...’
There was a pause, and then a quiet, ‘Are you quite sure?’
She could feel the tension that gathered in every straining muscle of the powerful body that supported her as Ryan waited for her answer. For her choice.
‘Yes—yes, I’m sure,’ she said starkly. ‘You don’t have to worry, Peggy...thanks.’
She felt a wave of joy sweep over her at the fierce exultation that ripped through Ryan’s expression. As they heard his mother’s soft footfalls retreat down the stairs his hand slid around the nape of her neck and slowly applied pressure.
‘She knows you’re in here with me,’ she whispered, when her mouth was an inch away from his.
He grinned wickedly. ‘Good, then she’ll know not to disturb us until morning!’ He nipped her lower lip, and their mouths eagerly clashed again as he tipped her body sideways onto the bed while he pulled off the rest of his clothes. When he was gloriously nude he lifted her back on top of him, uttering a guttural groan as the soft thicket between her legs caressed his belly and a moist, creamy warmth settled over his aching groin.
Long minutes of heated bliss followed, until Ryan finally caught her desperately seeking hands and rasped, ‘No—let me do it...you’ll hurt yourself this way...’
He turned her gently over onto her back, extending her arms out to her sides so that her wrists draped over the edge of the bed and bracing the soles of her feet flat against the bed on either side of his knees. Then he positioned her hips and, with his eyes fixed on her flushed and excited face, entered her in slow, steady increments until he was buried to the hilt. They both groaned as he withdrew and began the process all over again...establishing a slow, sensuous rhythm of measured thrusts that progressively accelerated until they were both wrenched to a breathless peak of explosive ecstasy, their voices mingling in hoarse cries of frenzied rapture.
Afterwards, as they lay in a satiated tangle of sweaty limbs, Ryan kissed her wounded hands reverently, each in turn. ‘If we’re this good now, imagine how much more intense the pleasure will be when you can use these again!’
‘I guess this means we’re having an affair after all...’ Jane’s smile was tinged with tristesse.
Ryan traced it with a provocative finger. ‘Not necessarily...’
Jane’s abused heart clenched in her chest.
‘Not if we regularised the situation.’
The blood drained out of her face, rushing to restart her stalled heart. Shock made her whisper barely audible. ‘What?’
‘Well, if you married me, we could sleep together as often as we like without offending your puritan soul!’ But he was laughing as he said it. He was joking—he had to be!
She recoiled. ‘You never said anything about marriage!’ Or love. Didn’t a declaration of love traditionally come first?
He shifted back from her, an infinitesimal distance, still smiling, but with a wariness in the back of his eyes that deepened her sense of foreboding. ‘Does that mean your answer would be no?’
She noticed the conditional tense. He hadn’t actually asked her a question yet, had he? It had been more of an evasively phrased statement. All Jane’s old insecurities came rushing back as she remembered the numerous false hopes that Ryan had taken delight in tormenting her with over the past two years. A love/hate relationship he had called it—but it was Jane who had done the loving and Ryan the hating. What if this was just another trap?
‘I suppose, if I said yes, I’d find myself jilted at the altar. That would be the ultimate revenge for you, wouldn’t it? To turn the tables and humiliate me in exactly the same way that I humiliated you—’
As soon as the words were out of her mouth she knew she had made a fatal mistake. Ryan’s face turned to stone and he slid out of the bed as if it were contaminated.
‘If that’s honestly the way you feel then any relationship between us is obviously futile. You’re never going to completely trust me, are you? No matter how many times I prove myself.’ He swept up his clothes and began pulling them on, the tenderness of a few moments ago wiped away as if it had never existed.
‘Oh, yes, you’ll sleep with me...even have a blazing affair with me against your better judgement. But you’ll always withhold yourself from true intimacy because you don’t trust me to behave honourably. I’m not the one who’s hung up on Ava—it’s you! You want to be a martyr to the past? Fine! You keep your trust...and I’ll keep my honour! I thought I’d found a woman of pride and courage, but it seems I was mistaken—you’re just another lost cause!’